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Sir Edwin Arnold |
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The club, situated in the heart of the city, is a building entirely of
the indigenous style as to design and decoration, frequented chiefly by
the higher officials and noblemen of Tokyo. Imagine, if you can, endless
platforms of polished wood, stairway apartment ladders of shining cedar
and pine, apartment after apartment carpeted with spotless matting, and
walled by the delicate joinery of the shoji---everywhere a scrupulous
neatness, an exquisite elegance, a dainty aesthetic reserve; nothing too
much anywhere of ornament. Except the faultless carpentry of the framework
and the tender color of the walls and paneled ceilings, you will see only
a stork or two in silk embroidery here, a dream in sepia of Fuji-San there,
a purple chrysanthemum plant yonder, in its pot of green and gray porcelain,
and the snow-white floors with their little square cushions. Our dinner was one of about twenty cushions, and we were received at
the entrance by about as many musumes---the servants of the establishment---having
their okusama at their head, who, upon our approach, prostrate
themselves on the outer edge of the matted hall, uttering musical little
murmurs of welcome and honor. Our footgear is laid aside below the dark
polished margin of the hall, and we step upon the soft yielding tatamis,
and are each then led by the hand of some graceful, small tripping musume
to the broad ladder, up which we must ascend to the dining-room, enlarged
for the occasion by the simple method of running back the shutters of
papered framework. The guests comprise European ladies as well as gentlemen,
and all are in their stocking-feet, for the loveliest satin slipper ever
worn could not venture to pass from the street pavement to these immaculate
mats. While you chat with friends, you turn suddenly to find one of the
damsels in the flowered kimono and the dazzling obi kneeling at your feet
with a cup of pale tea in her tiny hands. Each guest receives this preliminary
attention; then the square cushions are ranged round three sides of the
room, and we tuck our legs under us---those, at least, who can manage
it---and sit on our heels, the guest of honor occupying the center position
at the top. To each convive then enters a pretty, bright, well-dressed
Japanese waitress, with hair decked "to the nines," stuck full
of flowers and jeweled pins, and shining like polished black marble. She
never speaks or settles to any serious duty of the entertainment without
falling on her little knees, smoothing her skirt over them, and knocking
her nice little flat nose on the floor; and will either demurely watch
you use your hashi---your chopsticks---in respectful silence, or
prettily converse, and even offer her advice as to the most succulent
morsels of the feast, and the best order in which to do them justice.
Before each guest is first placed a cake of sugared confectionery and
some gayly-colored leaf-biscuits, with a tiny transparent cup of hot tea.
Then comes the first "honorable" table, a small lacquered tray
with lacquered bowls upon it, containing a covered basin of tsuyu-soup---the
"honorable dew"---a little pot of soy, a gilded platter with
various sweet and aromatic condiments upon it, and some wonderful vegetables,
environing some fairy cutlets of salmon. You disengage your chopsticks from their silken sheath and prepare for
action---nor is it so very difficult to wield those simple knives and
forks of Eastern Asia, if once the secret of the guiding fingers between
them be learned. Otherwise you will drop the very first mouthful from
the soup-bowl upon your shirt-front, to the gentle but never satirical
laughter of your musume. Amid the talk which buzzes around, you
will have inquired of her already in Japanese, "What is your honorable
name?" and "How many are your honorable years?" and she
will have informed you that she is O Hoshi, O Shika, O Tsubaki---that
is to say, "Miss Star," "Miss Camellia," or "Miss
Antelope"---and that she was eighteen years of age, or otherwise,
on her last birthday. Respectfully you consult O Shika San as to
what you should do with the fragrant and appetizing museum of delicacies
before you. She counsels you to seize the tiny lump of yellow condiment
with your chopsticks, to drop it in the soy, to stir up and flavor therewith
the pink flakes of salmon; and you get on very famously, watched by her
almond eyes with the warmest personal interest. Now and again she shuffles
forward on her small knees to fill your sake-cup, or to rearrange
the confusion into which your little bowls and platters have somehow fallen;
always with a consummate grace, modesty, and good breeding. And now, while
you were talking with your neighbor, she has glided off and reappeared
with another tray, on which is disclosed a yet more miscellaneous second
service. Her brown, tiny, well-formed hands insinuate deftly within reach, as
you kneel on your cushion, numerous saucers clustered round a fresh red
lacquer basin of vegetable soup, wherein swim unknown but attractive comestibles.
The combinations of these are startling, if you venture upon questioning
the delighted O Shika San, but you must be possessed of a courageous
appetite or you will subsequently disappoint the just expectations of
"Miss Antelope." Here are shrimps, it seems, pickled with ansu
(apricots), snipe subtly laid in beds of colored rice and kuri
(chestnuts); wild goose with radish cakes, and hare (usagi), seasoned
with preserved cherries amid little squares of perfumed almond paste,
and biscuits of persimmon. The piece de resistance is a pretty
slab of fluted glass, whereon repose artistic fragments of fish, mostly
raw---so grouped that the hues and outlines of the collection charm like
a water-color drawing. You play with your chopstick points among shreds
of tako (the cuttle-fish), kani (crab paste), saba
and hirame, resembling our mackerel and soles; and are led by the
earnest advice of your kneeling musume to try, perhaps, the uncooked trout
yamame. With the condiments her little fingers have mixed, it is
so good that you cease presently to feel like a voracious seal, and wonder
if it be not wrong, after all, to boil and fry anything. Environed with
all these in tiny dishes, and lightly fluttering from one to another---with
no bread or biscuit, it is true, but the warm, strong sake to wash
all down (for the glossy-haired musume keeps a little flask at her side
for your especial use)---you are beginning at last to be conscious of
having dined extraordinarily well, and also, perchance, of "pins
and needles" in your legs. So you say Mo yoroshii---"It
is enough!"---and now the service relapses a little for music and
dancing. The shoji are pushed back at the far end of the room, and three
musicians are discovered playing the samisen, the thirteen-stringed
koto, and a kind of violin. Before them sit the best Geishas from
Kyoto, and we are pleasantly weaned from our desultory dinner by a dramatic
pas de deux founded on the subjoined ideas: Hidari Jingoro was
one of the most celebrated wood-carvers of Japan. He flourished in the
early part of the seventeenth century. Specimens of his work are to be
seen in the great temples at Nikko and in Kyoto. The tradition represented in this
dance is the Japanese "Pygmalion and Galatea." Hidari Jingoro
having employed all the resources of his art to carve the image of a Kyoto
beauty to whom he is said to have been attached, succeeds so admirably
that, one day, he suddenly finds the figure endowed with life and movement.
But although the girl is there in the flesh, her soul is the soul of Jingoro---she
thinks with his thoughts, and moves with his movements. Jingoro would fain alter this and convert the wooden image into Umegaye
herself---as well in the mind as in appearance. He considers that the
object upon which all the feminine instincts of the fair sex are concentrated
is a mirror. Accordingly he places a mirror in the girl's hand, and she,
seeing her own face, immediately becomes Umegaye, and ceases to be a female
replica of Jingoro. Deprived of the mirror, however, she loses individuality,
and is once more a living automaton. The little musumes withdraw
to the side walls that we may better watch every step. Absolutely impossible
is it to describe with how much eloquence of pace and gesture the little
girl in gold and blue dances and glances round the motionless girl in
gold and scarlet, until she has charmed that black-eyed statue into life.
And then the rapture; the illusion; the disillusion; the anguish of watching
the imitativeness of that brown Galatea; the joy when the mirror renders
her individual; the grief when without it she relapses into a living shadow
of her dark-skinned Pygmalion; the artistic graces developed and the dainty
passages of emotion tripped to the simple but passionate music with the
gilded silken kimono floating and fluttering about those small bare feet,
those slender banded knees! The dance was a real piece of choregraphic
genius, and the applause sincere when the sculptor and his lovely image
bent themselves to the earth, and demurely resumed their cushions. Meantime, obeying Japanese etiquette, each guest in turn comes to the
"guest of honor," asks leave to drink from his sake-cup,
and obtaining it, raises the vessel to his forehead, drinks, rinses it
from the water-bowl, and fills it for his friend. When this is done, the
"guest of honor" must go round and pledge his associates in
the same way, while the three sides of the convivial square now for a
time break up into chatty groups, wherein the musumes mingle like
living flowers scattered about. But dinner is not nearly finished yet.
Before each cushion there is again laid a lacquered tray---none of the
others being yet removed---and this contains the choicest fish which can
be procured---a whole one---with his tail curled up in a garland of flower-buds,
together with cakes, scented spice-balls, and sugar-sticks, which you
are to eat if you can. If not able to cope with these new dainties, they
will be put into pretty boxes and deposited in your carriage or jinrikisha---indeed,
it is necessary to be careful in leaving one of these entertainments,
or you may sit on a boiled mullet, or a stuffed woodcock, or some cream-tartlets.
While we dally with the third service the Geishas dance again and again---the
last performance being full of comicgrace. It was called the Arashi-yama.
Arashiyama is one of the most celebrated spots in Kyoto. Its cherry blossoms
in spring and its maples in autumn attract thousands of visitors. Among
the cherry trees therewas a little theater called Mibu-do,where
wordless plays used to be acted when the flowers were in full bloom. Here
the Palace ladies were in the habit of coming every season, and their
attendants enjoyed a picnic and extemporized plays for the ladies' amusement.
The dance represented such a picnic. During the carouse a female enters,
beautifully dressed, but wearing the mask of Okame (the colloquial
term for a particularly fat homely wench). The convives, persuaded that
this disguise is intended to conceal uncommon charms, press her to drink;
and she, after receiving their attentions, suddenly removes her mask,
exhibiting the face, not of a lovely damsel, but of the veritable Okame
herself, the patron goddess of plain women. With wonderful spirit and
charm the gay little danseuses performed this comedy, ending our long
but never tedious dinner of five hours with a special figure called Sentakuya,
or the "Washermen's Trio." After this each musume led
her guest by the hand to the hall. Shoes were resumed, carriages entered,
and "honorable exits" made, in a dazzling forest tempest of
Sayonaras ("Farewell!") and Mata irrashais ("Come
soon again!"). Source From: Eva March Tappan, ed., The World's Story: A History of the World
in Story, Song, and Art, Volume I: China, Japan, and the Islands
of the Pacific, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), pp. 391-398. Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been
modernized by Prof. Arkenberg. |